Digital Bazaar and SecureKey Technologies recently announced a strategic collaboration to leverage new digital identity standards intended to enhance existing paper-based identity verification processes. Both companies join a growing web of technology providers – including GS1 US and TradeLens – that are working together to improve data sharing and collaboration through blockchain-based approaches and innovative authorization technologies. With combined industry expertise, this project will help set the foundation for more robust global standards for interoperable organizational identity. It will also demonstrate the value of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) emerging standards around digital identity for interoperable use in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) interactions.
Digital Bazaar will leverage SecureKey’s expertise in building next-generation, privacy-enhancing, and blockchain-based digital identity verification solutions, which includes the newly launched Verified.Me® service. The collaboration will roll-out a variety of interoperable digital products that address identity security gaps in in different sectors – specifically interoperability between organizations when it comes to developing and implementing paperless identity verification processes. These products will be based on the upcoming W3C international standards and will make use of both Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials to strongly authenticate and identify organizations engaging in high-risk business transactions.
“Collaborating with Digital Bazaar was a natural fit as we work towards our shared mission of increased privacy, security and consumer control for identity verification and attribute sharing,” said Dmitry Barinov, Chief Technology Officer of SecureKey. “The project that SecureKey is developing with Digital Bazaar to reduce paper-based identity management aligns well with the goals we are looking to accomplish through Verified.Me. We look forward to seeing this initiative come to fruition and to the continued growth of privacy-centric digital identity ecosystems that streamline transactions between all parties.”
SecureKey’s Verified.Me service applies an ecosystem approach to create a first-of-its kind, blockchain-based and consent-centric digital identity verification service for consumers in Canada. Verified.Me helps consumers verify their identities using personal information that they consent to share from Connections, like financial institutions, with service providers with whom they choose to interact online. The Verified.Me service was developed by SecureKey in cooperation with seven of Canada’s major financial institutions. Verified.Me both uses blockchain to support the transparency and integrity of the service and uses SecureKey’s Triple Blind® approach to support the most stringent privacy protection requirements.
By using Verified.Me, consumers and organizations can place more trust back into the identity verification processes required to gain access to online services. Consumers can choose when and where their personal information is shared. This increases security, privacy, and transparency, while reducing the need for paper, in-person, and over the phone identity verification practices. Both consumers and organizations alike also benefit from how Verified.Me helps reduce the unnecessary oversharing of personal information typically required in many of today’s identity verification processes.
Digital identity is a widely acknowledged but nuanced issue involving the infrastructure necessary to perform or do almost every action on the Internet. Both companies and individuals have separate, though not autonomous, digital identities and it has been generally accepted in the past that companies explicitly own the identities of those who use their services. With the advent of new technology standards like Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials, organizations can now control their own digital identities, rather than their service providers. This increases security, accuracy, and trust for all participants in the ecosystem.
“These new technologies enable globally interoperable digital identity that enhances or replaces existing paper-based processes.” said Manu Sporny, CEO of Digital Bazaar. “The Veres product line consists of standards-based digital wallet, credential issuing, and credential verification platforms that we have built in collaboration with SecureKey Technologies. This is a bold step forward for digital identity. Ultimately, our collaboration is crossing national boundaries and is jumpstarting a global digital identity economy.”
